


The Aftermath

by Maldoror_Chant



Series: Mal's Collected Drabbles [1]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Defining Moments, Drabble Collection, Gen, Light Angst, Morbid Humor, Pre-series timeline, mention of death and tragedies, our heroes as children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-02-01 13:48:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12706242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maldoror_Chant/pseuds/Maldoror_Chant
Summary: Tragedies happen. If you let your tragedy destroy your moral compass, you'll become a villain. If you can rise above it, it'll make you a hero.If you let it become the banner and the battle cry in your heart that lets you grin and laugh like a loon with your friends and fight like you're ripping fate a new one, then you're a Straw Hat.





	1. Zoro

**Author's Note:**

> The timeline for these 300 word drabbles is (for all except for Nami's) two weeks after a character's 'defining event', aka, the tragedy that gives them their motivations in the series. Oddly enough, despite being situated two weeks after a terrible event, the tone of these drabbles is grinding humor with just one quick line of pain lurking in the background...My inspiration has never been able to cough up anything normal.

The swords-master toasted the moon, drained his cup and contemplated his crazy student. 

"I really can't stress this enough, Zoro: it just won't work."

"I' ILL ORK!"

Kuina's father found himself smiling. The glare the boy leveled at him was considerably more lethal than the wobbly three-sword stance being developed.

"But you can't speak that way-"

"Ah on eed oo eak."

"...I guess you don't _need_ to, but how will you challenge your opponents or talk to your allies?" 

"Ah on eed aahies."

"Ah, you'll go it alone..." 

Bushido, which had shaped Koshiro's youth, was a solitary path. He'd been taught how to rise above emotions and thought. How to find enlightenment on the edge of a blade; how to drink sake and watch the moon rise instead of raging at fate for taking his daughter, and he missed her so much even though he knew he shouldn't because all things were transitory, even Buddha...

By contrast, Zoro's open rage, grief and lunatic determination were as refreshing as the sake, and the only thing that made his teacher smile these days. 

"I guess one can do without speech or allies, Zoro...but can you breathe like that? Enough to get by in a fight?"

After some experimental snorts and muffled gasps, the boy blinked in surprise and dismay.

The sensei refilled his cup, and knew that if he let those small shoulders slump, the sake would taste bitter.

"Use a stick to work up jaw strength. You will practice the first five basic lunges and learn to breathe all over again. If you can master that by morning..."

The inferno of challenge burned once more in his student's eyes.

"...then I'll teach you the next step."

"AWID!" 

The swords-master smiled into his cup and watched the night unfold.


	2. Luffy

“He’s driving us crazy - bouncing off rooftops, wrapping around flagpoles, running up _the side of buildings_! I've talked to him, but he won’t listen to me.” The mayor was trying hard not to sound whiny, with mitigated success. “Can’t you do anything?”

Makino wiped her hands on a rag. “I've watched him train since the pirates left...You're right, I need to talk some sense into him.”

“Thank you!”

She found Luffy swinging one-handed from a tree branch, up and over. Each rotation stretched his right arm like taffy, bringing that wide grin closer to ground-level; his other hand kept a straw hat clamped on his head. 

“Luffy?”

Predictably, Makino’s interruption resulted in Luffy wrapped around the branch like putty. 

“Is it time to eat?!” Luffy asked once he'd pulled free and bounced to a halt. 

Makino shook her head severely. “We need to talk.”

Blink.

“I know how you look up to Shanks, but what you’re doing is silly.”

Blink blink.

“I’ve watched you train.” Makino had never addressed the boy so sternly; the mayor would have approved. “I’ve noticed how you never use your left arm.”

Luffy gripped the overlarge hat on his head, the rim suddenly hiding his expression.

“Luffy, you still have both your arms. Shanks wouldn't want you limiting yourself because of what happened to him. When you train, use _both hands_. Become the best pirate you can be, and make him proud. Understood?"

She waited until Luffy nodded, his indomitable grin flickering back to life.

"Good. Now, come eat.”

“YEAH!”

Makino followed the streak of rubber speeding towards the bar, bouncing off the occasional wall. The mayor wouldn't approve after all, but she’d been as reasonable as she could. Was it her fault Shanks’ hopes for the boy had rubbed off on her too?


	3. Sanji

They'd evaded the draconian nurses and night watchmen. Operation Eggplant (so codenamed just to annoy the brat) was a go. 

"You're heavy, geezer."

"You're weak, shrimp."

They'd bickered their entire way through hostile territory, no reason to stop now. 

Using the kid as a crutch, Zeff kicked open the last door. Treasure gleamed beyond-

"Are you two out of bed _again_?!"

Their doctor! Blast! So close!

Zeff considered fighting. But his stump ached, and the shrimp couldn't fight; something Zeff planned to remedy when his custom-built peg-leg was ready. 

"I told you to rest! You both nearly died on that rock!" 

Zeff snorted. "That may be so, Doc, but eating that rat-poison you call hospital food is what will finish us off."

"That diet is designed to gradually restore your bodies without harming you-"

"I know the principle. I've starved before," Zeff said quietly. "But it doesn't have to taste bad. You must really not want to give your patients a reason to live."

"That food-"

"Can be improved. I'll show you how." Zeff gestured authoritatively at the hospital kitchen's gleaming appliances. 

"...Fine, but the child needs to rest-"

'The child' went from half-starved waif to spitting ball of fury in .3 seconds. "I'm helping the shit-geezer!"

Zeff wondered if the befuddled doctor knew that Sanji hoarded morsels of hospital food and savagely gnawed his knuckles and sheets at night. Probably not. Zeff knew about the gnawing, and he knew what they both needed.

"The busboy's damn useless, agreed-"

"Hey!"

"-but I need his legs. I'll teach him to cook while I'm at it."

"You bast-ow!"

"Manners." 

By dawn, those bitten, emaciated hands had been kept busy, and the nutritionally-correct food was delicious. If it was a sign of things to come, Zeff decided he could live with that.


	4. Chopper

Dr Kureha pounded some more monkshood beneath the pestle. "The name of a rabbit disease that infects humans. Causes ulcerations-"

"-flu-like symptoms, sometimes pneumonia and death!" Chopper finished breathlessly. "Tularemia!"

"Treatment?"

Front hooves clicked feverishly together. "Um-um-um-bed rest and fluids?"

That earned him a cuff with the pestle. "Wrong answer. The survival rate's better with streptomycin, and you can make 'em pay more."

"Ooooooh." Chopper's eyes were wide, admiring pools. "And for the rabbit?"

"Rabbits can't pay."

Chopper looked devastated. 

"...But if you kept it warm, it'd probably survive." Sometimes she feared Chopperitis was contagious...

Chopper gestured excitedly. "Ask me another one!"

Kureha rolled her eyes. The few times she managed to drag Chopper away from the books she'd assigned him to read, he'd beg for pop-quizzes instead of taking a break. He wanted to learn it all and he wanted to learn it yesterday. Or two weeks ago, before he fatally poisoned- but that was the past. Kureha hadn't lived a hundred-and-thirty-three years by regretting shit that had already happened, and she'd make sure Chopper was too busy for that. Might even turn the freak into a doctor of sorts. At the speed he was sponging up knowledge from her medical tomes, it wasn't that far-fetched a notion.

"Fine. The patient's nauseous, bloated, tired, says he's thirsty, back aches-"

"Oh, I know! I know!" Chopper held up a proud hoof. "Pregnancy!"

Kureha spilled the iodine she'd been pouring. 

She studied the genuinely innocent expression. "Say, fuzzbutt...you do know where baby reindeers come from, right?"

"...From the woods?"

Kureha, with a malicious grin, filled him in at length. Chopper spent the afternoon hiding under the stairs and refusing to pee with 'it'. That'd teach him to learn shit willy-nilly, Kureha thought, adding a book on basic biology to the study pile.


	5. Robin

Robin watched the crew around her try to contact the Marines as discreetly as possible. They were doing a rather pathetic job of it, the eight-year-old concluded. The first man who’d tried to sell her out early last week had at least assumed she was smart enough to read ship-to-ship code. She could read Poneglyphs, for god's sake...But that part of her crime had been concealed. Simply existing was the crime the world seemed ready to crucify her for. 

"We'll be at the next island soon, little girl! Um, do you want a blanket? Cookies? Money- m-milk, I mean milk?" 

The captain trailed off, his face a hideous caricature of innocence blended with guilt as he looked down at the small child, her arms primly crossed and feet tucked beneath the bench near the prow.

Robin smiled. She’d given up on laughing, it just hurt too much, but two weeks after Ohara had gone up in flame, smiling was starting to come naturally. Saul was right. Somehow, smiling made it better. Like she was her own conspiracy of one. Nico Robin against the world, and she was winning. And if nothing else...

...Robin’s attention drifted briefly to the arm sprouting from the tiller near the waterline, snagging it with rope, while the other two limbs freed the small lifeboat...

If nothing else, smiling like that made people _really nervous_. And distracted. And prone to make mistakes.

The Marines managed to get the crew off their doomed trawler before the current drove it into the rocks. They looked for the little lifeboat, but it was nowhere to be found.


	6. Nami

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nami's drabble is an in-series flashback, but it still fits in the theme.

Nami stayed out of sight in the forecastle’s shadow, letting the two men think they had the crisp, clear predawn to themselves. Zoro was warming up, swinging weighted iron around, one hand still in his pocket. Back muscles flowed like deep-sea currents, strong and deadly. Sanji, on the other hand, was finishing his routine. In a minute he'd go make breakfast. Standing on his hands, his legs moved slowly through different splits, control and grace personified. Then he tumbled forward, one foot scything down in a kick that could shatter stone but stopped one inch short of Merry's planks. 

The two were studiously ignoring each other, otherwise it'd end in a pissing contest lasting most of the morning. Nami had concluded that it was a male thing – aka, stupid. 

Belle-mere had taught her by example that men were either sweet idiots, suckers or potentially dangerous. Her daughters had learned both horticulture and self-defense simultaneously. Arlong’s pirates had not been men, though. They'd been fish. Sharks. The merciless sea incarnate. They'd treated Nami like a pet, a useful tool. It had shaped her. The pirates she'd robbed were tools in their turn. Pigeons. Marks. Prey.

Now Arlong Park lay in ruins, and she watched those two men - pirates, yes, and her nakama - and tried to fit new words into her vocabulary.

\- strong, supportive, trustworthy...backing her up...trusting her...Luffy fighting Arlong _for her_ -

...Too soon for those words after half a lifetime of lies, hers and Arlong's. Nami grinned as she found - for now - the word Belle-mere would have undoubtedly used for the guys aboard this ship. 

Decorative. 

Yeah, that suited those navigationally-challenged numbskulls down to the ground. No problem; she'd get these boys safely to harbor. Now, where had she left that map...?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No Usopp, I'm afraid, I never did figure out what would work for him.


	7. Franky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not originally part of the series, but fits thematically.

Franky was not only Super!, he knew what family was all about, unlike some idiots on Water 7 who thought it had something to do with 'genetics'.

Family wasn't some dame who'd squeezed you out and eventually dropped you overboard. Nah, family was a grinning Kokoro hitting him over the head with the ladle for filching food before it was cooked. It was Tom-san's humongous belly-laugh as another Battle Franky merrily exploded. It was Bakaburg kicking his ass for making off with the number ten wrench while the older apprentice was stuck under a ship's engine and patting the empty floor for it making puzzled 'nmaa?' sounds that were hilarious.

Family wasn't the respect his dismantler crew gave him. Naaaah. It was the way they threw up on his brightly coloured shirts when they couldn't handle their booze. It was the way Sodom had chomped down on him by mistake when Franky had tried to give the King Bull a large sea-king steak. It was the way his lil' sisters always echoed his every gesture - making him look like a total idiot when in fact that had not been a super move he'd try to make back there, but only an accidental stumble down the stairs.

So when the Straw Hats threatened to beat him up repeatedly before fighting by his side, when they filched his beloved speedos, stuffed him into a cannon, badgered his naked ass over half of Water 7, did his head in with stupid, heart-wrenching arguments and eventually grabbed him by the stones and damn well hauled him aboard to sail away on his life's endeavor...

The writing was on the wall, right? SUPER!


	8. Brook

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Same as Franky's, not originally part of the Aftermath Series but fits thematically. 
> 
> WARNING: Spoilers for Thriller Bark arc.
> 
> Also, Zo-Lu mentioned in this one.

Brook plinked his fiddle strings and considered his new crewmates. 

First, there was Franky. Building a ship and sailing it was a lovely notion, but...not all the way to Raftel, deadliest place on the planet.

An archaeologist studying the past made sense. Choosing to be branded Public Enemy Number One for studying the Lost History made considerably less.

Becoming renowned for bravery was a widespread ambition amongst pirates, but the wisdom of it was questionable when one had both the spine of a jellyfish and enough brains to see the dangers ahead.

As for Chopper, he'd certainly chosen the right ship to better his medical skills, but it didn't say much for his instincts of self-preservation.

Nami wanted to draw a world map which would include the Grand Line, aka the pirate's graveyard, while Sanji was staking his life on finding a stretch of ocean which, according to all known lore, didn't exist. 

Zoro craved a rematch with the man who'd nearly chopped him in two the first time. The only reason this attitude couldn't be called 'suicidal' was that it wouldn't leave any word strong enough for his rubber boyfriend's great big ambition, and the less said about that the better, it made Brook's skull ache.

Brook, overjoyed at finding a crew in which a skeletal musician braving the Grand Line for the sake of a whale was pretty much par for the course, broke into a mad jig on his fiddle, an impromptu composition to celebrate his new friends.

_Oh to live the life of a pirate_

_You will need plenty of guts._

_Hope and valour aplenty_

_Good folk will say you are nuts._

_In this brave life we have chosen,_

_to do what we dream will be done,_

_wisdom is much overrated,_

_'tis better by far to have none!_


End file.
